The soul-stirring sculptures of Linda Mickens, both large and small, anchored one corner of the Eli Whitney Barn. Across the room, Michael Jackson’s iconic Off the Wall album cover in the style of Saint Phifer faced portraits of women dancing and laughing as seen through the eyes of Jasmine Nikole.
Those neighbored the dazzling array of faces created by Shaunda Holloway, while between them lay stairs leading to the open studio of Susan Clinard, where a seemingly endless number of her own sculptures that one could see themselves and just about anyone else in the world in stood, sat, and hung from the rafters.
All this and so much more greeted visitors of the second annual Amplify the Arts Festival, which took place this past Saturday and Sunday at the rustic Whitney Avenue location, where yet another rainy day could not keep lovers of the arts away.
The first festival happened last year in the town center park and Keene center in Hamden, but this year organizer Karimah Mickens wanted to “do something different.”
“Hamden is starting to grow a lot with the arts,” she said. “I wanted to do something focused on the artists. I wanted to exhibit.”
Mickens had her “three main people” she knew she would “anchor the show around” — Clinard, her mother Linda Mickens, and Holloway. Clinard then became “a great partner” in setting up the event, including selecting more artists. Both last year’s and this year’s events were made possible by a grant received from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, which also allowed her to add in performers and provide prizes for a juried youth art competition as well during the event.
As Mickens looked into using the space at the barn and considered the closing of Artspace and the lack of a City-Wide Open Studios event this year, she worked “intentionally” with Erector Square artists and others who were also creating new spaces for artists during this time, coordinating events so as to not do anything at the same time so they could create a similar month’s worth of events for everyone to attend.
“It’s all about lifting up spaces for artists — especially people of color, LGBTQ, youth — so this is what this was about,” she said. “I’m just happy folks are coming through and they’re going to get to experience it.”
Clinard was thrilled to be a part of it all and to work with Mickens, saying how they put their “heads together” thinking of different artists from Hamden and some from Bridgeport who could participate in this event.
“It’s full of life and beauty in there,” she said. “You’re just going to be loving it.” She noted that it had the “same feeling” as the yearly open studios of the past, which had been part of City-Wide Open Studios, with additional performances and extras.
“Institutions can’t tell us we can stop doing what we know how to do best, which is celebrate with others and open our space to creativity and share,” she added.
Clinard was feeling bittersweet about her own time at the barn since she announced earlier this year that she would be moving her studio space from there, noting that once again the community has made all the difference, with people asking if they can help her move when it is time.
“Quite literally if everyone who offered held two sculptures in each hand I could get to where I need to go,” Clinard said. “No matter where I go, my community and lovely, lovely supporters and people will always be there.… It’s very touching and that’s what matters most. The space is the space and this one is beautiful, but the community you create with your work is the stuff that matters the most.”
On this day this beautiful space contained not only the work of Clinard, Linda Mickens, and Holloway, but also Amira Brown, Edward Jefferson, Nathan Lewis, Luciana McClure, Jasmine Nikole, Iyaba Ibo Mandingo, and Darnell “Saint” Phifer. Music was provided by the Female DJ Association. The Beyond the Salt food truck was on hand, and a series of performers, including musicians, poets, and puppeteers, were scheduled throughout the two days along with vendors of art and other wares.
Phifer was thrilled to be a part of the event. It was his second time showing his acrylic and charcoal works in New Haven. The Bridgeport artist said he likes to “highlight Black stories and Black culture.” He chose to highlight NBA legend Allen Iverson in one piece because “he changed basketball” and was important to him growing up. While Phifer’s portraits mostly did not include facial features, they left the viewer open and ready to look at them and imagine themselves in their shoes.
On the opposite wall from Phifer, artist Jasmine Nikole, who said she spent her whole childhood between New Haven and Hamden, highlighted Black women in her acrylic paintings.
“Each one has a story to tell,” she said, including “struggles they overcame.”
One in particular showed a woman with a trumpet, which Nikole said she used to be able to share her story after a childhood where she was “shy” and told to be “polite and good.”
“The story inspires everyone to pick up their trumpet,” she said. “Mine is art. It unites people if you can relate to the story, even if the picture doesn’t look like you.”
Ed Jefferson had a multitude of different pieces on display next to Phifer, including sculpture, woodwork, and watercolors, many of them depicting family and friends. A plumber who is also a self-taught artist since childhood, Jefferson said his themes are “common to me.”
“I paint what I see, what I live,” he said, influenced by the family around him and the music he listens to. He noted that his family had been pushing him to “get out there more” and was thrilled to have been asked by Mickens to participate in this event.
As the rain belted down the crowd got bigger, the weather not keeping them from going outside and partaking of the food truck and vendors under the tents on one side of the barn. In the upper loft area of the barn, McClure and Lewis displayed their work. McClure said it was her first time showing her pieces on paper as opposed to the photographs she is known for, adding that many of them depicted a “combination of the natural and the meditative.” Nearby on the loft as well as right below, Holloway’s pieces offered a stunning array of faces in all shapes and colors, and the artist herself was even creating new pieces during the event.
Meanwhile across the room Linda Mickens smiled and shared conversation with an endless number of astonished visitors surrounded by her work, while above them the phrase “never be afraid to stand up for your ancestors because they were never afraid to lay down for you” spoke boldly. She was joined on that side of the barn by Iyaba Ibo Mandingo’s bold visual art and poetry books, as well as the mindful work of Amira Brown, who said her pieces were made in 2021 and that they were still very meaningful to her. Her artist’s statement included the directive “to see yourself in the people you glimpse walking by, to confront the alley ways of your existence that you avoid, to the places and curbs and crowds that shift and change throughout the years.”
In a way those words encompassed this event and ones like it that are now coming to fruition throughout the area. Art always happens, whether in lockdown or in places where crowds gather, and to share it often completes it. If we have learned anything, it is that change is constant, and that it can lead us to a variety of spaces and places we have yet to explore both inside our art and outside in the world. If Saturday was a glimpse of what is to come, there will be more than enough people there ready and willing to explore it together.
More information about the other Open Studio events taking place in New Haven this month can be found on the Erector Square website.
